Pinterest’s new update to its Pinterest Follow button looks to strengthen its relationship with retailers by allowing users to follow a company’s Pinterest while remaining on the retailers’ site. A code tweak to the button replaces taking the customer to the retailer’s Pinterest page with a simple pop-up window.
As explained by Pinterest’s Jason Costa in a recent blog post, “The new Follow button will pop up a small dialog with a preview of your account’s latest Pins – and your visitors won’t ever have to leave your website to follow you.” Adding the button to a site is simple and only requires adding a few lines of code generated by their widget. Sites already using a Pinterest Follow button do not need to change anything as the code tweak automatically updates all existing buttons.
This move should help entice retailers who may have been hesitant about sending traffic from their page to Pinterest to utilize the Pinterest Follow button.
Pinterest’s influence as a marketing channel continues to grow. The site recently reached over 30 billion “pins”, which also have a longer reach and life span than tweets or Facebook posts. Currently, 85% of businesses in the Internet Retailer Top 500 utilize Pinterest, up from 78% a year ago. Adobe’s Q3 2013 Social Insights Report shows Pinterest as the second highest converting social media referrer at 55 cent revenue per visitor, a 150% year over year increase that puts it just behind Facebook.
